Fear Not

I am blessed with a very able husband. The man is handy at just about everything and has a ridiculously broad range of knowledge. Can't quite remember the details of how an internal combustion engines works, just ask he can tell you down to the molecular level. Forgot how the Federal Reserve board determines the prime rate? He'll explain the current trend in fiscal policy and the geopolitical history that led to this system. Don't get him started on compound interest or how satellites stay in orbit. He can explain how the monks found yeast on the walls of some cave and it all lead to the brewing of some fine beer.

He's not just a brainiac. He has a lot of very practical skills as well. He's very handy with tools and engines and computers and negotiating anything. He can always see which way we should tilt a piece of furniture to make it fit through a doorway that it just shouldn't fit through. He knows when the sounds in the car are bad sounds as opposed to normal sounds. But best of all, he isn't afraid of anything. I mean it. He isn’t afraid of being embarrassed or of the authorities or of things that go bump in the night. He will take on any challenge. Equally he will walk away from anything that loses his interest or becomes boring.

There are upsides and downsides to a husband like this. The downside is all the magazine articles that tell you how to manipulate your man don't work. The upside is that I’m not scared of much of anything either. It's like it is contagious or something. Our family motto is "We can do that." Whatever it is we can do it. We may not win or we might change our minds later but if there is something someone in the family wants to do, we will do it or at least we will try. Fear will not hold us down. It seems to have become our credo "If you are afraid to do something then that is the very reason you should do it." Fear just gets in the way of life.

I think of this these last few weeks of the Easter season. Jesus keeps saying "Fear not". Jesus states clearly not to be afraid. Go help the poor and the hungry and the widows and the orphans. Visit those in prison. You can't do that if you allow fear to control your life. Being afraid of the bad guys in prison or the people who are very different because they are poor, or afraid of the germs of the sick may well be how we feel but if we let that fear be the deciding factor we will fail our calling. If we raise our children to stay inside and stay away from everyone how will they be Christians? How will they show the good fruit? We must encourage our children to be brave, to do the things they can do even though we could do those things for them. If we are halted in our Christian walk by the fear of everything, how much more will our children, who follow our every movement, be afraid?

Jesus extols us not to be afraid. Our God is big enough. We will know when we should take precautions; the warning system for real danger is hardwired into us. God gave us the ability to discern real danger but we have to be willing to trust God and let go of the fear, fear that causes the static in our minds and hearts that can obliterate the sound of danger signals when they are real. Static that obliterates the voice of God. To live in fear of everyday life is to be crippled as a Christian.

The first step is to face something fearful. You may feel fear but push beyond that and act on the mandates of Christianity. Talk to the lonely. Feed the hungry. Be among people who are not like you, knowing that God would not tell us to do these things if we could not do them.

Being around someone who is fearless also helps. Jesus was fearless. He never cowered at danger to his physical well being or his social standing or his pride. He wasn't afraid of embarrassment or of the authorities, be they government or church. He pushed forward doing what he knew was right. We can do that too. We can show our children how to do that. We know what to do. Just do it. Jesus was very clear, "Fear not".

Blessings,
Michelle

Woman behold thy son

Woman behold thy son. Son behold thy mother.

Mary, standing at the cross watching her son die, is faced with letting go of the Jesus who is her son and, by faith, embracing the Jesus who is her savior, her God.
Mary, the Mary of the magnificat, "my soul magnifies the Lord he has done great things for me." These were Mary's words at the beginning of her amazing journey into the motherhood of Jesus. Mary was the first to know Jesus as a human. Before he moved in her womb she knew that he was there. Mary held tight to him in the stable. The mother who took him to be blessed by Simeon. Who frantically searched for her lost 12 year old, for three days, while her wonderkind son sat in the temple, amazing the teachers. Mary, who witnessed his first miracle of turning the water into wine; she must have know of all of the healings and miracles, the raising of Lazarus. Mary was there to see even his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Her son heralded as the king, the savior of her people, the Jews. What mother wouldn't blush with pride? Her beautiful boy fulfilling every great and wonderful prophesy. Not just loved by his mother but loved by many.
Through all of these moments in Jesus' life Mary, like all mothers, was in the process of letting go of her son. Slowly he grew in stature and wisdom and he grew beyond his mother. She was there to see him from afar but he had become his own man, God's own man.
We mother's the world over feel that appropriate but searing pulling away of our sons. They leave so quickly. Every mother has to let go of her son, that is the right way to raise a son. Slowly they break away they leave you. First to kindergarten then to middle school before you know it they are leaving for college and then for a wife or a career or a calling or maybe all three. The leaving, the breaking away is sometimes fast but often slow. It is the right thing but that doesn't mean it is the easy thing. Saying farewell to being the most important person to your son is difficult. Oh, our hearts cry out "Let me hold him like in the stable, let me keep those mean boys away, those terrible soldiers”.
But we can't do that. We, like Mary, have to allow God's plan to play out. Often a plan we can't imagine; a plan that seems ill considered. Mary must stand at the cross and decide does she believe God's plan is being brought forth or is this all a terrible mistake, a mistake that is costing her, her son?
At the cross, Jesus essentially hands his mother over to his beloved disciple. “Woman, behold thy son. Son behold thy mother”. He is saying his final good-bye to Mary as his human mother. His words tell her that he will not be her earthly son any longer. It is his final good bye to the mother/son relationship they have known. While dying and in agony, he demonstrates his tender care for her by making some final and practical arrangements for the care of his mother. A good son. Mary will go with John. John will take care of her and she will mother the grown John. The message is clear, Jesus isn’t coming down off that cross alive, this terrible event is not going to stop. It is continuing and Mary can’t see the end; how this can work out.
Now Mary is at a pivotal moment, can she say good bye to her beloved son and in that moment, in faith, embrace him as her savior, her Lord? Embrace him as the savior who loves all humanity as he had once loved her perhaps even more than he had loved her. Trusting God's plan, moving forward in faith and in hope. In the midst of this terrible occasion, with the celebrations only a memory Mary has the choice of trusting God or turning inward with her pain.
Isn't that where we stand? At the cross with a decision to make. Will we allow the love that transcends human love to open our eyes through faith? Will we accept God's plan for our lives knowing it is a lovingly wrought plan even when we don't understand the elements of that plan or how it could possibly work out for good? Through the web of pain that comes with being human we must find the thread of faith and hope as Mary did and embrace a loving and present Christ.
Mary didn't run from the face of adversity neither when she found herself pregnant and unmarried nor when they killed her son. Neither when she was given that son nor when he was taken away. As the horror of losing her son unfolded before her she stood in faith and in hope. Mary didn’t know what was to come next. It appears that she accepted her loss and within that loss found, three days later, that she gained a risen Lord.
We are called to stand before the cross with faith, faith in God’s enduring love, faith and hope that the resurrection will bring the all encompassing love of God and the peace that is beyond understanding even in the midst of our greatest losses even when we don’t know the end of the story, embracing that faith and hope as God moves us through the journey that is this life.

Amen